Arthur Upfield - The Devil_s Steps

“I really cannot allow you to sleep any longer Mr. Bonaparte.”

Bony opened first one eye, then the other. Then he was on his feet and smiling into Miss Jade’s dark eyes.

“Madame, forgive me!” he said, mentally alert the instant he awoke. “That I should sleep in your presence is a crime. Has the roof fallen in?”

“No, but George has just fallen out-with the afternoon tea, and I thought I would have afternoon tea with you. May I?”

Bony gave the slightest bow, and his pleasure was expressed in his dancing blue eyes.

“There is nothing which would give me greater pleasure, Miss Jade,” he told her with conviction in both eyes and voice.

George was waiting with his trolley just behind Miss Jade, and before she could direct him, he brought the twin of the chair Bony had been occupying, arranged the cushion with expert hands, and then hurried to bring a small table which he placed before them.

About the centre of the veranda, just back from the steps leading down to the path which bisected the lawn to the wicket gate, a group already at tea comprised the Watkins couple, Lee, Sellman and Downes.

“You know, Miss Jade,” Bony murmured. “Earlier this afternoon I found myself glad that the number of your guests is very small. Selfish of me. But I am doubly glad now. Had the number been large you would not have found the opportunity to honour me like this.”

Miss Jade smiled, and when she smiled Bony liked her the more. Such a speech from another man might have sounded cynical and she would have been quick to detect it. From Bony it came easily and was natural and genuine.

“I could have had more guests, Mr. Bonaparte, but after what happened here, I felt it would be unfair to the staff to have a crowd. Just the few of us provide the staff with something to do, and the organisation is kept running. Next week we shall again be full up. I didn’t wish to be surrounded by a lot of-er-rubber-necks, you understand.”

“Quite. Rubber-necks with money are as objectionable as those without.” Bony waved his disengaged hand to indicate the scene presented to them-Fred and his lawn mower in the foreground against the backdrop of valley and mountains now so coloured that better artists than Raymond Leslie had failed to reproduce them. “What a place to dwell in! You know, Miss Jade, you are a remarkably fortunate woman.”

“Yes, I am,” she admitted. “A few years ago, when I stood here amid trees and bracken and gazed through tree trunks across the valley to those mountains, I said: ‘This is where I shall build my dream house.’ Lo-it is built. I’m not old enough yet, however, to forget the days and the nights when my feet ached, and my back felt broken, when I first set up in a guest house. I had only one woman to help me, and I was cook, waitress and manageress all together.”

“And the secret of success is-personality,” stated Bony.

“The secret of success is-organisation,” countered Miss Jade.“The study of details so that unnecessary labour is eliminated. Success is not dependent on the appearance of the hostess-it might be in a saloon bar.”

Bony chuckled. “I stand reproved-or rather I sit reproved. How do you get along with the local people?”

Miss Jade’s dark eyes opened a fraction.

“You have been talking to people-to local people?”

“I have been gossiping,” he admitted. “I think I understand now the remark you made when I was imaginative enough to see us on a far-back station, when you called me Bony and I called you by your Christian name. I regret that I was the unwitting cause of the little unpleasantness at lunch, but I have read many of Bagshott’s articles and really was interested to learn that he lived up here. It would appear that, in the minds of the persons I spoke to about him-as about any public person-that he’s a thoroughly bad character. I wonder how much of itis gossip.”

“What did they tell you?” Miss Jadeasked, her eyes abruptly hard.

“Let me tabulate. One, that he was carrying on with a single girl for many years, for a child of eight or nine is said to be their son. Two, that Military Intelligence investigated him on suspicion that he was sending messages to Japan. Three, that he keeps his wife a prisoner and is likely at any moment to kill her and bury her in the garden. Four, that he was mixed up in amurder, or it might have been two or even three murders. And five, well, I can’t remember number five. It couldn’t have beenso lurid as one to four inclusive or I would have remembered it.”

“Are you being serious?” asked Miss Jade.

Bony nodded, saying: “Perfectly.”

Miss Jade lay back in her chair and laughed. Her laughter caused the party above the steps to glance across at her. It reached Fred, who looked towards the veranda. He had completed the cutting of three quarters of the left-hand section of the lawn, and was working near the bottom fence. In that instant Bony heard someone give a shrill whistle at the far end of the house and beyond his vision and Fred stopped his work and raised both hands in vigorous acknowledgement. Then he went on with his work, and Miss Jade, who had apparently not heard the whistle or seen Fred’s answering signal, said, with laughter still in her voice:

“For goodness sake, Mr. Bonaparte, don’t go round asking people about me.”

“Oh, indeed!” Bony exclaimed gravely. “Is your character worse than Mr. Bagshott’s?”

“Probably at least as bad. One has to be more circumspect than when living in a suburb, you know. You needn’t believe all that about Mr. Bagshott. Why, it’s just silly. He’s been living here for several years now. I’ve never heard such things from the nice people living about here. What is the matter?”

“I’ve just remembered the fifth item about Bagshott. It is said that he catches rabbits and domestic dogs and poisons them to watch them die so that he can put the effects of poisons into his books.”

“Rubbish!” snapped Miss Jade, and for the first time Bony saw anger in her dark eyes. “I was once at a meeting when Mr. Bagshott spoke, and he gave me the impression that he doesn’t mince his words, and is careless of the impression he makes. Temperamental! Well, so am I sometimes.”

“I am always temperamental. Tell me, is Bagshott a sociable man?”

Miss Jade regarded Bony with eyes which were steady.

“I don’t really know. He doesn’t visit the people I know here.”

“Have you ever seen him?”

“Only at that meeting I mentioned I attended.”

“Forgive me. I forgot that reference.” Bony turned from her to gaze out over the top of the stone balustrade and across the lawn. Fred was standing with his hands on his hips and staring up the slope of the lawn towards the house. “Yes,” he went on, “as in all near-country districts, the gossips are really professionals. The bush people are so different, you know. They seem to have so many more important matters to think about, besides which they are so scattered and therefore warmly human. I wonder what that man is looking at so intently.”

“He’s wasting the time I’m paying him for,” Miss Jade said, once again the controller of an efficiently run organisation. She rose and Bony rose with her. As they advanced to the balustrade, George started to leave the far corner of the veranda with his service trolley. Then Miss Jade exclaimed:

“Why, it looks like footprints on the grass!”

“It certainly does,” agreed the interested Bony. “They begin here near the steps and theyproceed parallel with the path right down to the gate, or where Fred has stopped with the mower. It’s rather extraordinary.”

Hearing George with the trolley collecting the tea things from their table, Bony turned and called softly to him, and the man, politely interested, came to stand a little behind Miss Jade.